eucatastrophe n. eucatastrophic [ < Gr. eu, "good" and catastrophe Coined by JRR Tolkien.] 1. (in a narrative) The event that shifts the balance in favor of the protagonist when all seems lost. 2. A happy ending.

November 2013

11/23/2013

“Despite their dissatisfaction with traditional religion, some people continue to linger in the vestibule of the church, keeping at least one foot in the building of their faith family.”

Tom Stella does not suggest that these people “lingering in the vestibules” of their churches should leave them entirely, but he is hinting that they should at least “move to the veranda” if not the back yard.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.” Rumi writes. That field is where this book intends to take its readers.

Its argument is clearly that God exists but that God generally exists outside the institutions and doctrinal statements. Stella’s God is one that the Transcendentalists were celebrating and that mystics of all ages have told us they could experience. Stella describes his own Catholic upbringing and pits it against his present state of understanding and experience (or described experience). “In contrast to this,” he says of his discarded religion,

“the God of Rumi's field, . . . is not found within religion, but beyond it; that is, beyond the doctrines and dogmas, the creeds and claims that speak of God as a being separate from creation. To discover God beyond religion is to uncover God in the midst of life. In our groping, we may stumble upon the holy in nature as well as in church. We sometimes hear the Sacred sounding through popular songs as well as religious hymns. We may be guided by God's word in novels and poetry as well as in Scripture. And our souls may be renewed by immersion in our hobbies as well as through participation in devotional practice.”

In many ways, Stella lands within both circles of the Venn diagram that draws the contrast between the skeptic and the traditional Christian. We see him learning to love his enemies for example …

“I am learning gradually to honor even those aspects of life that it is right to work toward eradicating, and to look reverently upon those whom I view is my enemies.”

We see him cultivating a spirit of gratitude towards life as it comes:

“Appreciation can be recognized as an essential element of a prayerful life when understood as a derivative of the two Latin words adpretium, meaning ‘go to the precious.’”

He speaks feelingly of mercy and redemption:

“A few weeks before the release of the film based on her book, Dead Man Walking, I saw sister Helen Prejean interviewed on a television talk show. When asked why she worked with death row prisoners, she replied, ‘Because everyone is always more than the worst thing they've ever done.’ We are always more than the worst aspect of ourselves.”

He grasps the centrality of love in the life of the spiritual person:

“'He was a serious student.' 'She was deeply ascetic.' 'He was an exemplary teacher.' 'She was a truly good person.’ If these words were engraved on our tombstones, they would indicate that our lives were well lived. But if it could not be said of us that we were madly in love with life, perhaps we were not so alive after all.”

Indeed, Stella reminds us of the quite orthodox message that the fact that we are not dead is not sufficient proof that we are alive. That said, in other ways, the author steps out of the orthodox mainline church with respect to his views on the Bible, the nature of Jesus, and the message of the traditional Gospel. “The term son of God is not a title indicating that Jesus's relationship with God is unique,” he writes,

“or that it sets them apart from everyone else. Rather, it is a designation that affirms what is true for everyone of us: that we are the offspring of God, one with the One from who's being we are begotten.”

In his words, maturity in faith involves a certain elevation of the divine in our humanity and a demotion of the exceptionalism in Jesus (or any religious leader who claims to be able to do what no one else can) i.e. “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” “I am convinced that it is possible to be a passionate Christian,” Stella says,

“without believing that the statements made about [Jesus] in the Gospels were statements made by him. It is unlikely that he proclaimed himself to be supernatural, but he was and is spirit filled to those of us who are inspired by his life and his message.”

“As I see it now,” he then adds,

“the problem with the traditional understanding of Jesus as the way is that it isn't very Christian!”

And this is how he suggests that God can and must be found “beyond” religion. Surrendering the ground of sacred textual certainty, he advocates a greater dependence upon mystical certainty (which can never be or should never be entirely a certainty at all I suppose).

“Comparative religion scholar Houston Smith sums up this cynical view when he states that in the minds of many, the word mysticism begins with mist, ends with schism, and has 'I' in the middle! And spiritual teacher James Finley speaks jokingly from beneath his psychologist's hat when he claims that the difference between mystics and schizophrenics is that mystics are careful whom they talk to!”

Philosopher Sam Keen suggests, “You can starve to death trying to eat a cookbook."

No doubt, many a believer has done so. No doubt there is a catchy counter-argument some evangelical could produce to counter it but never-the-less, it is true. We are not in pursuit of a relationship with a book so much as a personality.

To move beyond religion then, this book argues, the secret is to move beyond the Reformation’s Sola Scriptura. “Many people believe that Scripture is too sacred to mess with,” Stella says,

“But I believe that it is so sacred that we must mess with it.”

Stella agrees with German novelist Thomas Mann who defined myth as “a story about the way things never were, but always are.” “So is a myth true?” we are asked, “Literally true, no. Really true, yes."

Religions, he would suggest, are the exoskeletons of once living formulations of belief following mystic experience. "Every tradition begins in the white heat of transcendent realization,” he writes,

“then gradually over time suffers hardening of the religious arteries through the unavoidable process of institutionalization."

The book speaks to a large and ever growing segment of faith. It also would have been burned by Stella’s church during the Inquisition. And someday, we will all know. Or not.

Question for Comment: Is there more danger in going out beyond one’s religion? Or in never going out beyond it?

11/17/2013

I picked up this book because I was looking for books for my Psychology class to read. I got interested in it because I am about to teach Othello in my English class and wanted to understand sociopaths so as to better understand the character of Iago. I could not put the book down after it had achieved the above two purposes because I was learning more about what it means to be human.

First, a disclaimer; the book is written by someone who claims to be a certifiable sociopath and, by her own definition, has no negative feelings about lying to people to serve her interest. She claims to be a religious person who uses her religion as a moral compass in the place of an emotional one that she admittedly lacks. She has ruined people (by her own admission) but never killed someone (by her own admission). She seems to care much about being religiously observant and bemoans the fact that when her religion instructs her to have “godly sorrow” when she sins, she can’t. In some ways, she likens herself to someone who might wish to be straight but is attracted to people of her own sex. She might want to know what it would mean to feel “godly sorrow” but she revels in the fact that for her, it is not an option. At times, she may wish to know what it would like to be “normal” but most of the time, she enjoys the advantages of her wiring.

So, lets start with wiring. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) defines sociopathology as “a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others.” Let’s start this discussion with how she defines a sociopath.

“Key among the characteristics of the diagnosis are a lack of remorse, a penchant for deceit, and a failure to conform to social norms. I prefer to define my sociopathy as a set of traits that inform my personality but don’t define me: I am generally free of entangling and irrational emotions, I am strategic and canny, I am intelligent and confident and charming, but I also struggle to react appropriately to other people’s confusing and emotion-driven social cues.”

“Like many people, I adhere to a religion that gives me moral guidance. The practice of it is just good sense—it keeps you out of prison and safely hidden in the crowd. But the heart of morality is something I have never understood. My view of morality is instrumental. I abide by conventional dictates when it suits me, and otherwise, I follow my own course with little need for justification.”

“Sociopaths don’t include elements of guilt or moral responsibility in their mental stories, only self-interest and self-preservation. I don’t assign moral values to my choices, just cost-benefit. And indeed, sociopaths are without exception obsessed with power, playing and winning games, appeasing their boredom, and seeking pleasure. My story lines focus on how smart I am or how well I play a situation.”

“The only situation in which I may feel shame or embarrassment is when I have been outplayed.”

“Normal people feel emotions that I simply don’t. For them, emotions like guilt serve as convenient shortcuts, telling people when they’re crossing societal or moral boundaries that they’re better off observing.”

“I am devoutly religious. I am functionally a good person and yet I am not motivated or constrained by the same things that most good people are. Am I a monster? I prefer to believe that you and I simply occupy different points on the spectrum of humanity.”

“According to Cleckley, psychopaths are antisocials who excel at seeming social—seeming to feel, desire, hope, and love like everyone else. They exist virtually indistinguishable among society.”

“Sociopaths actually know what society considers right and wrong most of the time, they just don’t feel an emotional compulsion to conform their behavior to societal standards.”

And here is how she explains the origins of the condition:

“Sociopaths’ minds are very different from most people’s. Our brain structure is different: smaller amygdala (emotional center), poorer connections between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex (decision-making, inter alia), what has been described as “potholes” in our brains, and a longer and thinner corpus callosum separating the hemispheres of our brains. What that means is our thought is not as dominated by emotions, nor do emotions drive our decision-making, and we can transfer information between the hemispheres of our brains abnormally fast. In other words, give us a problem to think about and we will naturally process it in a different way than people with typical brains. How that plays out in the individual sociopath depends on a lot of different factors, but I have met sociopaths who have both the innocence of children gleefully hurling their bodies into ocean waves and the ruthlessness of single-minded predators under threat. There’s something sort of refreshing about our brutal approach to the world. And when we live in a world where ‘everything we think can in principle be thought by someone else,’ it might be nice to be around someone who is an entirely different ‘someone else’ than you are.”

“Recent research from King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry revealed that the brains of sociopathic criminals show distinctly less gray matter in the areas of the brain that are important for understanding the emotions of others. Studies indicate that sociopathic brains do not respond emotionally to words such as death, rape, and cancer the same way that normal brains do. We respond with about as much emotion as we do to a word like chair. More research has shown that sociopathic brains have a lower number of connections between the prefrontal cortex (which helps regulate emotions, processes threats, and facilitates decision-making) and the amygdala (which processes emotions), which could explain why sociopaths do not feel sufficient negative emotions when doing something antisocial. This neurological disconnect between emotion and decision-making can be a decided competitive advantage in most professional settings, where risk taking is often richly rewarded, but it can cause real problems in personal settings, in which sociopaths are expected to make emotional connections.”

“I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies … And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?”

“Magnetic resonance imaging on the brains of psychopathic adults has shown significant differences in the size and density of regions of the brain associated with empathy and social values and active in moral decision-making. These areas are also critical for reinforcing positive outcomes and discouraging negative ones. In callous-unemotional children, negative feedback like a parent’s frown, a teacher’s chiding, or a friend’s yelp of pain may not register the way it would in a normal brain.”

Obviously, the reader needs to be cautious here because what she is saying is that she cannot help being insensitive. It’s the way she was born. She argues that she tries to live her life as though she has an internal moral compass but she knows that she doesn’t. And she understands that in her emotional world, there are emotional chemical rewards for acquiring power over people; not connection with them. If you were born with no nervous system, it would make sense that you would take different kinds of risks for different kinds of rewards. The differences in brain structure or brain chemistry, she argues, manifest themselves in the way that sociopaths “feel” about the world differently and interact with society differently. “This blithe reaction to negative events,” she writes,

“may be due to the excessive dopamine that characterizes the sociopathic brain. Vanderbilt University researchers have linked the excess dopamine in sociopaths to a hypersensitive reward system in the brain that releases as much as four times the normal amount of dopamine in response to either a perceived gain of money upon the successful completion of a task, or chemical stimulants. These researchers suggested that the overactive reward system is to blame for a sociopath’s impulsive, risk-seeking behavior because “these individuals appear to have such a strong draw to reward—to the carrot—that it overwhelms the sense of risk or concern about the stick.”

“From personal experience, I feel like my risk-seeking behavior stems from a low fear response or a lack of natural anxiety in potentially dangerous, traumatic, or stressful situations.”

“It’s not that I’m being irrational. It’s that suffering the consequences of something rarely involves actual “suffering.” Maybe there is a small thrill in taunting drivers or risking my life savings, but mainly it’s that I just don’t feel sufficient anxiety in these situations warning me to be more careful.”

“Cleckley’s intuition that sociopaths do not respond normally to negative consequences was validated by a famous study by Hare in which he administered mild electrical shocks to both psychopaths and a normal control group. A timer ticking down preceded the shock. Normal people would show signs of anxiety as the timer got closer to the shock, anticipating the slight pain. Psychopaths were remarkably unfazed by the shock and did not express a comparable increase in anxiety as the timer ticked down.”

“I don’t have the off switch in my brain telling me when to stop—no natural sense of boundaries alerting me to when I am on the verge of taking something too far. When I do these things, it doesn’t feel as if I’m so overwhelmed by the carrot; it’s more like I am so unimpressed by the stick.”

“The reality is that I have nothing of what people refer to as a conscience or remorse. The concept of morality, when defined as an emotional understanding of right and wrong, goes right over my head like an inside joke of which I am not a part. Consequently, I have only the slightest interest in it and no special insight into evil, or no more than a certain level of self-awareness would reveal to any of us. Still, I often wonder what life would be like to feel that things were right or wrong, to have an internal compass to direct me to my moral north. I wonder what life would be like to always be ‘feeling’ certain ways about things, to have conviction, which is apparently how many people experience the world.”

“Because sociopaths don’t experience morality emotionally, I would argue that we are freed to be more rational and more tolerant.” [By tolerant, she means that she does not judge people who act immorally as defined by society. i.e. her legal clients or CEOs of predatory businesses.]

“I am never compelled to refrain from doing something merely because it is wrong—only because doing so would result in undesirable consequences. Thus, evil has no special meaning for me. There is no mystery in it. It is a word to describe a sense of wrongness that I do not feel.”

What became apparent to me as I read was an answer to a question that had arisen while I was reading Othello the other day. Given that Iago seems to have no emotional feelings, how is it that he is the most intuitive and prescient character in the play when it comes to the feelings of others? How does a person who feels little to nothing themselves become a genius in playing with the feelings of others? Confessions of a Sociopath gave me a clue; not being a sociopath myself (I don’t think), it exists as a hypothesis only. Lacking any internal compulsion for acting appropriately in community, sociopaths are left with the unavoidable necessity of studying the feelings of others so as to know how to act appropriately to their goals. They need to be constantly vigilant with respect to other’s feelings externally so as to know how to camouflage their lack of it internally. And as a result, they become experts in the feelings of others.

Here are some of the passages in the book that relate to this hypothesis.

“We have alternative means of keeping ourselves in line. In fact, because guilt does not drive our decision-making, we experience fewer emotional prejudices and more freedom of thought and action.

I mimic the way other people interact with others, not to trick them, but so I can hide among them.”

“I realized early on that other people did not treat their lives as if it were a complicated game in which all events, things, and people could be measured with mathematical precision toward achieving their own personal satisfaction and pleasure. Somewhat more recently, I also noticed that other people felt guilt, a special kind of regret that did not arise from negative consequences but from some amorphous moral dictate that had taken root in them from consciousness. They felt bad in a way that I never felt when they hurt others, as if the hurt they had caused was so cosmically connected to the goodness of the universe as to reverberate back to them. These things I had pretended to feel for many years, had attempted assiduously to mimic the manifestations of, but had never actually felt in my life.”

“As an outsider trying to fit in, I had to learn about people through observation and the recognition of patterns. I became very perceptive. I also became good at acting. I could see that other kids thought and behaved differently from me, often reacting emotionally whereas I stayed calm, and so I began to mimic them. I think my first attempts at imitating normal behavior were honest attempts to actually be normal, in the same way that an infant imitates the speech patterns of its parents not to try to trick, but in an honest attempt to communicate. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I would never be normal.”

“It was in my preteen years that I realized how crucial it was to actively cultivate attractive personality traits. I would study my peers to discover what made them seem likable to each other, and I became all of those things.”

“Not only could I wear any number of masks to suit any situation, I had learned how to wear them with consistency.”

“I can seem amazingly prescient and insightful, to the point that people proclaim that no one else has ever understood them as well as I do. But the truth is far more complex and hinges on the meaning of understanding. In a way, I don’t understand them at all. I can only make predictions based on the past behavior that they’ve exhibited to me, the same way computers determine whether you’re a bad credit risk based on millions of data points. I am the ultimate empiricist, and not by choice.”

“But despite these handicaps, sociopaths have a unique talent for getting under other people’s skin. I am often asked how sociopaths seem to be able to “see” someone’s soul and view them as they truly are. It’s a good question and a common complaint (compliment?) regarding sociopaths. I don’t think that sociopaths are any more perceptive than other people, they’re just looking for different things—weaknesses, flaws, and other areas to exploit—and concentrating a good deal of effort on it. Sociopaths are dangerous because they are such keen students of human interactions, closely studying others with the goal of picking up on the right social cues to blend in, imitate normal behavior, and exploit where they can. The more you pay attention to something, the more aware you will be.”

“Sociopaths are like dark matter in that we typically keep our influence hidden, albeit in plain sight, but you can certainly see our effects. I watch for people’s reactions to me so I am able to understand.”

Perhaps the most critical revelation the author makes about herself (and let’s face it, the author could be a guy for all I know) is that the sociopath, lacking an emotional center, lacks a clear definitive “self.” If you spend your life looking outside of yourself for feelings that are real – if you spend your life mining other people’s emotional reality so that you can manipulate them to your advantage, you wind up, hook or by crook, not really knowing who you are other than an emotional mercenary chameleon. Ask a chameleon “what color are you?” and what can the chameleon say? “What color are you right now?” Here is what the author says about this terrible reality of the sociopath experience

“At the end of the nine months [of intense self-scrutiny] I had come to a few conclusions. First, I didn’t really have a self at all. I was like an Etch A Sketch, constantly shaking myself up and starting over. And somewhere, somehow, in the last few years, I had come to believe certain things about myself that weren’t really true. For instance, because I often am very charming and outwardly good-natured, I thought that I must be a warmhearted person. Pretending to conform to societal expectations had become so easy that I forgot I was pretending.”

“Without actively spinning stories, I had no self.”

“I was a prolific liar, often for no real reason. I was a pleasure seeker, and although I had no real sense of what my self was, I still thought very well of myself. I didn’t need a self to exist. I had a unique role in the world: I was like an enzyme among molecules, catalyzing reactions without being affected myself. Or a virus, looking for a host. I was different from normal people, but I knew that I existed. I acted and interacted. I was largely an illusion, but even an illusion is real in its own way—people experience it, and more important, people respond to it. I believe that a lot of the sociopath’s traits such as charm, manipulation, lying, promiscuity, chameleonism, mask wearing, and lack of empathy are largely attributable to a very weak sense of self.”

“The person who has gotten closest to identifying this attribute of sociopaths is a professor at California State University–Northridge, Howard Kamler. He argues that “it is not just that [the sociopath] is lacking a strongly identified moral identity, he is likely lacking a strongly identified self identity almost altogether.”

“When the sociopath feels no sense of remorse, it’s due less to a lack of conscience and more to the fact that the sociopath does not feel that he has betrayed himself: ‘If a person has no strong sense of self in general, then of course he will probably have no strong sense of lost integrity when he violates life projects which for the rest of us would be central parts of our self identities.’”

“One of the manifestations of sociopathy in me is an ambivalence in regards to sex and sexual orientation. Sociopaths are unusually impressionable, very flexible with their own sense of self. Because we don’t have a rigid self-image or worldview, we don’t observe social norms, we don’t have a moral compass, and we have a fluid definition of right and wrong. We can also be shape-shifters, smooth-talking and charming. We do not have an established default position on anything. We do not have anything that we would call conviction. This extends, at least in some degree, to our sexuality.”

“And really, I can’t help myself. I am continually shaping my self-presentation so that I can control what people think of me. I have been doing it for so long that I cannot even imagine what I would be if I were not performing all the time, blunting my edges and cultivating tricks of invitation. Even the way I speak is manufactured.”

“That is why my prosthetic moral compass has been so useful to me, in helping to define me and restrict my behavior; my personal code of efficiency and religion have, for the most part, kept me on the straight and narrow.”

This is the part where her relationship to her religion begins to make sense. In the absence of a moral center, she uses the church’s code of morality as a reasonable facsimile.

“Mormons believe that everyone has the potential to be godlike, to be a creator of worlds. (This makes the LDS church a sociopath’s dream; it’s a belief that’s well suited to my own megalomaniacal sense of divine destiny.)”

“I like the idea that there is a creator of all things, including sociopaths. I like having a check on my behavior, a reason for being a good sociopath.”

“Throughout my childhood, I was able to make up for my inability to intuit social norms by following the church’s clear set of expectations and guidelines—from detailed lessons on chastity to small pamphlets with handy bullet-pointed rules about what to wear, whom and how to date, what not to watch or listen to, and how much money to give to the church. I liked that these things were written down.”

In other words, she uses the feelings of others and the doctrines of her church as a “prosthetic moral compass.” She is like a person with dyslexia who has figured out how to get other people (her religion or peers) to read signs and menus for them. It is a strategy that often works but not always. And because her “conscience” is external and involves none of what “normals” would call “pangs of remorse,” she is inevitably ignoring it when “winning” demands that she do so.

“If I’m a predator, do I prey for sport or to survive? I learned how to be this way to survive, but it’s also true that I do it when it’s not necessary. Many predators engage in similar behavior, so-called “surplus killing,” or attacking prey without an immediate need or use for the animal. Have you seen videos of killer whales batting around their prey only to kill and abandon them? Scientists assure us that they aren’t actually killing for the fun of it (how would they know?), but rather that surplus killing is a survival mechanism—those who engage in surplus killing are the most aggressive, and the most aggressive predators are the ones who survive and procreate. Predators who engage in surplus killing are constantly at the ready, always willing to make the kill. Similarly, I am always ready to play to win, no matter whom I am playing against or how innocent or nonthreatening they are to me in that moment. It makes sense. If I were only ruthless when I needed to be or only toward particular types of people who “deserved” it, I don’t think I could be as effective. I would be constantly questioning myself—is this person worth it? Do I really need to be going after them in this particular way? Instead, my natural inclination is to be aggressive to everyone. Nowadays I put a lot of effort into suppressing this urge. I’ve allowed myself to be tamed by people in order to have longer-lasting relationships, but the animalistic urge to destroy is always bubbling underneath the surface. For many I’m a beautiful and exotic pet but inherently dangerous—like a white tiger to my family and friends’ Siegfried and Roy.”

“One could say that by repeatedly manipulating, “ruining,” and crushing people, I’m consistently violating the idea of doing unto others as I would have them do unto me. The thing is that I have no problem with others trying to ruin me back. In my mind, it’s just business, not personal. We’re all competing for power. Would I be upset if I had a sandwich shop and someone opened up a sandwich shop across the street? I might be annoyed, but I wouldn’t take it personally. I don’t have hate in my heart for these people. I may wish them ill, but it’s not because I harbor ill will against them. They just happen to be players in my game and controlling others is how I validate my own sense of self-worth. Perhaps, one might argue, by trying to control other people.”

“The biggest stumbling block I have faced with my Mormon faith is the idea of “godly sorrow.” The Bible makes a distinction between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. As a child I was taught that while worldly sorrow meant being sad you got caught, godly sorrow meant you were sorry you had strayed. Godly sorrow would change your future behavior: “that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you.” Godly sorrow is supposed to be a precursor to repentance, which of course is the key to invoking God’s mercy. My problem is I don’t think I have ever felt godly sorrow. When I do bad things, I can worry about the spiritual consequences and the possibility of a karmic backlash, the same way that I might worry when I am double-parked and concerned that I am about to get my car ticketed or towed. Is that enough, I wonder?”

“My prosthetic moral compass generally functions well for me, and most of the time my method happens to track what the majority thinks is the moral thing to do. The one thing that sociopath “codes” tend to have in common, though, is that they don’t fully map with prevailing social norms, those unspoken rules and customs that govern behavior in a group.”

“People take for granted the empathy with which they were born, and the morality that they somehow internalize. Crying when someone you love cries—I was not born with this shortcut into the hearts of other people. Feeling guilt when you hurt someone you love is an internal safeguard to prevent you from losing them, but I have never been able to learn it. The work-arounds that I have devised for these things often fail me.”

“Most people have to listen to whatever signal is being broadcast the strongest, both within themselves and in their social environments. By virtue of my sociopathy, I get to choose which signals to listen to.”

“Sociopaths, on the other hand, are like traditional radios. I can only hear the strongest signal if I happen to be on that station, or if I’m being extra vigilant about scanning. It’s a lot of work; there’s a lot of trial and error involved. Often the best I can do is realize I’ve missed an important cue, then shift and shuffle through my stations to recover.”

Reading this book has left me with some disturbing questions:

First, How does one identify sociopaths in their life when, by very nature of the malady, they experts at mimicking care and empathy they do not have?

The author offers a number of criteria for self-diagnosis and tells of her attempts to come to terms with her own condition by having herself professionally evaluated. She mentions the PCL-R (Psychopathy Checklist–Revised) was developed by Dr. Robert D. Hare, professor emeritus of forensic psychology at the University of British Columbia and is generally considered the primary authority on criminal psychopathy.

Secondly, Are sociopaths, by definition, “dangerous” to society? Are they “monsters” best kept in isolation from potential “prey”?

The book could lead you to different conclusions about that question. Clearly, the author wants to convince you that Sociopath can construct a “pseudo-conscience” that will work to keep them in-line much of the time. But, she also makes it clear that that vicarious conscience should not be regarded as entirely trustworthy. By definition, the boundary between society and narcissism that exists in a functional sociopath is porous and intermittent at best and potentially and fatally insufficient at times. “I am absolutely shameless when it comes to asking for, pushing for, and ultimately inducing people to give me what I want,” she writes, “whatever it takes.”

“I think that sociopathy gives me a natural competitive advantage, a unique way of thinking that is hardwired into my brain. I have an almost invincible confidence in my own abilities. I am hyper-observant of the flow of influence and power in a group. And I never panic in the face of crisis.”

“The thing with sociopaths is that we are largely unaffected by fear.”

“The acquisition, retention, and exploitation of power are what most motivate sociopaths. This much I know.”

“It’s a pleasure to build something, to see the physical embodiment of your work. It can be equally pleasurable to destroy, to see the devastation that your hands have wrought, like swinging a pickax at a discarded wooden door with careless abandon. Both make you feel powerful and capable. But there is a special pleasure in destruction because of its rarity—like dissolving a pearl in champagne.”

One would enter an intimate relationship with a sociopath at their own peril she warns. Though she seems to have learned to “control” her “inner vampire” over time (do we not all improve over time), she notes that when she was younger, she was “dangerous” to potential partners’ emotional health.

“Because I am largely just mimicking emotional connection or understanding, almost all of my exploits have an expiration date at the moment when pretending to care ceases to be sustainable.”

I’ve always known that my heart is a little blacker and colder than most people’s. Maybe that’s why it’s so tempting to try to break other people.”

“People are so hungry for love; they die a little every day for want of it—for want of touch and acceptance. And to become someone’s narcotic I found immensely satisfying.”

“I discovered that you could love almost anyone, really, and make them your reason for living at least for a time—whether it is an evening or a week or a few weeks. It wasn’t just that you could have more power over someone through love than through any other means, but you could have access to more parts of them. There were more levers to pull and buttons to push, endless modalities. I could bring relief to pain of which I was the direct and sole cause. I thought nothing of deceiving or manipulating them.”

“I realized I had thus far been blind. I had unknowingly denied myself the pleasures of really leaping into and consuming the emotional inner worlds of others. Why did I ever think that it was sufficient simply to make people do things for me when I could make them want to do things for me?”

“That’s the trouble with seduction as a game played for the thrill of it. You can innocently go about seducing people, even enjoy the attention and affection for a time, and then suddenly, when you’re ready to move on, you’re left with this dependent besotted person who can hardly stand to live without you.”

“Typically when I set out to seduce someone, I cut the target loose as soon as I know I have won. My rationale is to treat it like sport fishing: the fun is in catching the fish, not in gutting, cleaning, and cooking the fish afterward, so why not throw the fish back to be caught another day?”

“The pleasure of a seduction conquest lies in both the physical satisfaction and the mental challenge of completely occupying a space in a person’s mind until it’s yours, like a squatter.”

“I was a calculating, ruthless animal, after all,” she says of this period of her life.

“I can read every word of your soul, become deeply engrossed in the study of it until I’ve comprehended every nuance and detail. But then when I’m done, I’ll discard it as easily as if it were a newspaper, shaking my head at how the ink has stained my fingers gray. My desire to know every layer of you isn’t feigned, but interest isn’t love, and I make no promises of forever. Perhaps I do every so often, but you have no business believing me.”

“Seduction is about reminding myself of my own desirability, not about increasing my acquisitions. It is the fuel I feed my own self-love.”

“Still, when we’re trying, our understanding of your wants and needs matched with our charm and flexible personality means that we can and will literally become the man or woman of your dreams. In fact, when I love, my first step is to gather as much information as possible about every aspect of the person’s life in order to more closely resemble their ideal mate. As one blog reader noted, it can become an addiction: You know all their insecurities and you fulfill them. They become dependent upon you, because of it. They start feeling empty without you. They get captured in the moment.”

And yet, “Sociopathy does not necessarily equal misanthropy,” she somehow concludes.

My last question is this; Are there ways that sociopaths can serve society as sociopaths if they are first understood and given a chance to understand themselves?

That is an interesting question. In the Biblical book of Exodus, we are told that Moses comes down from Mt. Sinai to find the people involved in idolatry. He asks for volunteers to execute a judgment on them and the tribe of Levi steps forward and accepts the task. “The Levites did as Moses commanded,” the text says, “and that day about three thousand of the people died.”

Are there tasks, even in moral societies, which actually require people to have a deficient emotional response? (I am not arguing here that what the Levites do here was moral or immoral. It is just a conversation starter). In Confessions of a Sociopath, the author suggests that there might be a number of good uses for sociopathology. She refers to her own chosen field of law.

"Perhaps because it is so high-stakes, the courtroom is the scene of the greatest human drama. But I believe it is to my advantage that I am relatively unfazed by the emotion that seems to sweep up many of the players.

"To get what I need, I must spin together a convincing narrative. I play off people’s hopes and expectations, their preconceptions and biases. I use everything I’ve learned from a lifetime of lying about what makes a story plausible, even believable, to make my story seem like “the truth” and the opposing attorney’s story seem like a pack of lies.”

”Indeed, there are a lot of careers for which the skill set of a sociopath is particularly well tailored. Jim Fallon mentions surgeon and investment banker. Sociopath researcher Jennifer Skeem has suggested that the protagonist in the film The Hurt Locker, a bomb-disposal specialist in Iraq, is a classic example of a sociopath due to his lack of regard for the rules, his boldness and fearlessness in defusing IEDs, and his trouble relating to the emotions of his team members. By looking at the list of characteristics, I could also add professions like military officer, spy, hedge fund manager, politician, jet pilot, underwater welder, firefighter, or many others. A high risk tolerance allows people like me to take opportunities that others could not, providing us an edge in competitive environments."

Would I recommend this book?

I think I have done a pretty good job capturing its message in the quotes above. It is certainly a book that will make you think. Maybe it will make you wish to know more. Maybe it will make you wish that you did not know this much. I read things like this for professional reasons but I always seem to learn things about myself when I learn anything about anybody. I will conclude with the following passage that I could find myself resonating with.

“I often wish I could just passively watch people without being expected to participate myself, like television. I actually do spend a lot of time in front of the television for this reason, and I am pretty undiscriminating in what I will watch. I like the closed universes and conventional plot devices of television series, knowing that there is nothing for me to do but to passively watch what happens, having no stake in the outcome. I find it easier to identify with characters in movies and books than with people in real life. In movies, you can watch and analyze people freely and without detection. In books, you can listen in on their inner thoughts, take the time to contemplate them, and listen in again if you are so compelled. I have learned more about people from books, television, and movies than I ever have in real life. I have enjoyed people more that way, too.”

Maybe that is why I spend four or five hours reading and writing instead of interacting with real people in my real world. Time to get back to that.

11/16/2013

Barbara Duguid begins with a premise that Christianity does not aim to make better much less perfect if making you more dependent is achieved by leaving you imperfect. “Many Christians suffer from this relentless cycle of conviction, repentance, efforts to change, and complete defeat,” she says,

“Perhaps our greatest problem is not the reality of our sin, but our unbiblical expectations of what Christian growth should look like. What if growing in grace is more about humility, dependence, and exalting Christ than it is about defeating sin? . . . If our ongoing sin keeps us at the foot of the cross, desperately in need of a refuge and redeemer, then the party starts here and now and my daily sin becomes the conduit for outrageous joy and celebration. So let the festivities begin.”

This seems to be the central theme of John Newton’s ministery and Diguid’s book.

“God thinks that you will actually come to know and love him better as a desperate and weak sinner in continual need of grace than you would as a triumphant Christian warrior who wins each and every battle against sin. This makes sense out of our experience as Christians. If the job of the Holy Spirit is to make you more humble and dependent on Christ, more grateful for his sacrifice and more adoring of him as a wonderful Savior, then he might be doing a very, very good job even though you still sin every day.

Clearly, this makes the hypothesis that God is intimately involved in the life of the believer unfalsifiable as miraculous improvement in self-control can serve as evidence and complete failure to change at all can be used as a evidence. Indeed, regression could also be seen as a marker of spiritual engagement as well if it rendered a believer more dependent upon grace. The world view becomes unassailable to any outcome in the individual’s pursuit of sanctification (perfection).

I am not sure I like this. I mean … I am not sure I like the logic of it. Even if it is so.

“Joy blossoms in our hearts not as we try harder and harder to grow, but as we see more clearly the depths of our sin and understand more fully our utter helplessness. Only then will we take our eyes off ourselves and look to Christ for all that we need in life and in death. Only then will we truly cherish our Savior and believe that we need him every minute of every day, and that without him we can do nothing (John 15:5). “

This seems to be what the writers of the New Testament are driving at. The Sermon on the Mount seems to have, as its goal, to get a pursuer of righteousness to give up trying. The bar is set beyond attainment because the requirements of the Kingdom are humility not achievement of perfection. What better way to make everyone humble than the setting of an unattainable standard. “We all need to learn complete dependence on Christ, for without him we can do nothing” the author insists.

“In love, God will crush his growing spiritual pride and lead him to a deeper and richer understanding of the covenant of grace. [Newtton] also believed that the richest fruit of God’s work in our hearts would be evidenced by increasing humility and dependence on Christ for everything, rather than in a “victorious Christian life. . . . In the wilderness experiences of life we learn that, as Jack Miller used to say, we are more sinful than we ever imagined and more loved than we ever dared to hope.”

One senses that if humility is the aim, the more weakness we find … the more incapacity for actualizing our potential as saints, the closer we get to what our real spiritual goals should be. “As Newton observed, ‘Every day draws forth some new corruption which before was little observed, or at least discovers it in a stronger light than before.’”

“If the goal of sanctification is actually growing in humility and greater dependence on Christ, then the Holy Spirit is doing an excellent job. Through his ongoing struggles with indwelling sin, the maturing believer will spend many years learning that he is more sinful than he ever imagined, in order to discover that he is indeed far more loved than he ever dared to hope.”

“When God changes the will and gives someone a great desire for obedience but not the strength to withstand temptation, he is putting his child in a painful and difficult position. Yet he does this in love and not with judgment or punishment in mind. He is humbling this child in a powerful way and crushing the child’s self-reliance. This can feel like a curse, when it is actually a great gift.”

Clearly, this argument turns many a Jerimiad on its head. It argues that instead of failure being the consequence of human lack of cooperation with the divine will, it is more than likely the consequence of God’s refusal to cooperate with the human’s will to be perfect (and thus independent).

One might make the argument that THE original sin had to do with the temptation to be “wise” i.e. to be able to know right and wrong without dependence upon relationship and that we humans have been trying to set up our own independent kingdoms ever since. “We are profoundly confused about what God expects of us,” Extravagant Grace tells us, “and what we are actually capable of achieving in this life.

“God loves it when we are dazzled by the brilliant glory of his Son as well, and so he will not let us be overly impressed with our own performance for long. . . . When we are standing tall and strong we do not tend to look at Christ—we don’t need him. But when we fall flat on our faces, overcome with sin and weakness, there is nowhere else for us to look but to the One who has died our death and lived the life we should have lived. God loves broken and contrite hearts, and we don’t acquire those by living the victorious Christian life.”

Duguid argues that “Newton’s view of Christian weakness is utterly biblical and consistently taught throughout the Bible.” She uses ample references to the text. Indeed, the text of the Bible is an entire world that can be examined like a scientist might pull data from experiments. Biblical verses are regarded as the best way to access the way the world is. The author’s experiences are used simply to illustrate points that she proves with textual evidence.

“Suddenly a thought entered my mind, and I know it wasn’t from me. If God does all things for his own glory and for the benefit of the elect, then somehow this headache must accomplish both of those goals. It has to glorify God and be good for me in some mysterious way."

"If God loves me—and I know he does, for he has proved it at the cross—then it is love that compels him not to give me my way in this. Why would a loving heavenly Father plan this for me today?”

For someone, like me, who wants the texts they hold to be as sacred to jive with their experience of life … such that a person without that text could come to the same truth as a person who had no experiences outside that text, this creates … mmm … problems. What if one’s experience and the text seem to teach opposing perceptual frameworks? What then? The kind of faith that Barbara Duguid has answers, “surrender the experience until it confirms to the text.”

Facing failure, John Newton has seemingly taught the author to find something to celebrate in that failure. As Hemingway puts it in Old Man and the Sea, you can be destroyed but not defeated.

“She said, “Barbara, God is going to pour his grace into you. He will either give you grace to change and to grow in these two areas of great struggle with sin, or he will give you the grace to stay the same and survive your failure.”

“The essence of human fallenness is a determined autonomy from God, and it appears in our lives in the form of countless self-salvation strategies.”

“Therefore, to look at all the imperatives in Scripture to pursue sanctification as if this were something in our power to achieve is a deadly mistake.”

“Many Christians have never heard of grace that is sufficient to survive brutal failure in our performance and nonetheless enables us to find deep joy and peace in the righteousness of Christ.”

“Obviously God’s relationship to his creation is not exactly like a designer and his dolls. Yet in a similar fashion, God chose to leave us significantly deformed and imperfect after our conversion because he values something more than our sinlessness.”

“God is capable, when he pleases and for his own purposes, of giving me the grace to stand and resist temptation. But often he chooses instead, for his own good purposes, to show me grace through my falls, humbling me and teaching me my desperate need of him.”

“Although God did not create your struggle or tempt you to it, he has called you to walk with it. He has assigned it to you, and he loves you as he calls you to walk through it. “

“Why are we so afraid of grace?” This book justifiably asks Christians? Can we come to accept that imperfect people are imperfect because God has chosen not to curse them with the perfection we would like to see in them? Maybe we should follow Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s advise to call churches, “fellowships of the undevout.”

In many ways, her advice to churches is worth considering. Instead of judging people for not being further along in their pilgrimage towards perfection, maybe we should share thanks. Saints, like John Newton, “can remind us of the gospel time and time again,” she says,

“These are people who won’t be surprised by your sin when you confess it. They will say, “Of course you sinned. . . . Come with me to the throne of grace to celebrate the love of your Savior and to find help in your time of need.”

Question for Comment: This book argues that we are mistaken if we think God is asking of us “How good are you?” when He is really asking “How dependent are you?” When you imagine God asking you questions, what do you think God is asking you?

Today was a day for reading, an an interesting and eclectic assortment of readings it was. This morning, I finished Extravagant Grace by Barbara Duguid, a book focusing on the teachings of John Newton (recommended by a friend). This afternoon, I read the Dhamapada (Buddist text for my Buddhism class this week). After the Dhamapada, I finished reading Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Thomas (not the author’s real name) in pursuit of a better understanding of the character, Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello (something I will begin teaching next week). I will just note that last week’s Ethics class was about the Ethics of Religion so there is a bit of a confluence going on in my reading this weekend.

But let me start with the Dhamapada.

One is struck by the similarities between some of the teachings of the Stoics, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and various texts in Judaism. Really, the subject is perfection and how one arrives at it. IN the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seems to indicate that perfection is a state of being and paradoxically, a weak, dependent, broken state of being. I think this is why the list of precepts which follows the beatitudes sets the bar pretty much beyond a human’s ability to achieve it. In my own mind, Jesus is interpreting the first nine commandments in the moral light of the tenth which prohibit covetousness. When dealing with moral absolutes, Jesus constantly goes below the level of action into the level of desire. “Perfection is not the avoidance of murder when you would like to murder but the complete avoidance of any hint of wishing to murder.” Contamination can occur at the one part per millionth level where nothing but the shreds of an embryonic motive can be seen.

The essence of perfection in the Dharmapada is total self-control. The Bhudda seems to set up a fight to the death between the frontal cortex and the brain-stem (as did the Stoics) and, as Jesus seems to do when he says things like “Love your enemies” and “turn the other cheek” and if you but lust you have committed adultery already.” Both moral codes make the absolute domination of the amygdala and brain stem a prerequisite to heaven/nirvana/bliss/happiness. In so far as humans cannot really DO this (unless maybe you are a reverse sociopath of some sort), it makes sense that failure will be the result and the sense of that failure (“Blessed are the meek”) become the new righteousness.

Both texts raise questions in my mind. If we COULD overwhelm our instincts, would we become better humans for doing so? What was the purpose of those instincts if they were meant to be imperialized and subjected? Isn’t it possible that they serve some function? Barbara Duguid’s book resolves the problem in her Christian context by saying that though God can give victory over “sin” (the word she would use to describe that part of the human personality that lusts out of bounds or hates a rival or feels ego wounds) He often does not simply because dependence is what He is after not performance.

I confess, that it makes sense to me that human beings, if told that they can and should over-ride their instincts will eventually feel like failures to some degree. I guess my question for Barbara Duguid, Epictetus and the Buddha is … can anyone really be expected to have as much control over those drives as a few people can? Are there not just some people who have the sorts of brain wiring that allows them to be more … conscious and in control? And how does spiritual empowerment work? Clearly, the Bible would lead one to believe that God can make self-control possible. And the Buddha seems to suggest that it is an ability that can be acquired with training and Epictetus seems to assert that Stoicism is a skill that can be learned. Maybe simply believing that you will have help gives you the impetus to try and it is in trying that you get the skill? More questions than answers.

Anyway, here are my favorite lines from the Dharmapada.

3. "He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me." Those who harbor such thoughts do not still their hatred.

4. "He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me." Those who do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred.

5. Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.

19. Much though he recites the sacred texts, but acts not accordingly, that heedless man is like a cowherd who only counts the cows of others — he does not partake of the blessings of the holy life.

35. Wonderful, indeed, it is to subdue the mind, so difficult to subdue, ever swift, and seizing whatever it desires. A tamed mind brings happiness.

61. Should a seeker not find a companion who is better or equal, let him resolutely pursue a solitary course; there is no fellowship with the fool.

64. Though all his life a fool associates with a wise man, he no more comprehends the Truth than a spoon tastes the flavor of the soup.

65. Though only for a moment a discerning person associates with a wise man, quickly he comprehends the Truth, just as the tongue tastes the flavor of the soup.

75. One is the quest for worldly gain, and quite another is the path to Nibbana. Clearly understanding this, let not the monk, the disciple of the Buddha, be carried away by worldly acclaim, but develop detachment instead.

94. Even the gods hold dear the wise one, whose senses are subdued like horses well trained by a charioteer, whose pride is destroyed and who is free from the cankers.

97. The man who is without blind faith, who knows the Uncreated, who has severed all links, destroyed all causes (for karma, good and evil), and thrown out all desires — he, truly, is the most excellent of men.

110. Better it is to live one day virtuous and meditative than to live a hundred years immoral and uncontrolled.

111. Better it is to live one day wise and meditative than to live a hundred years foolish and uncontrolled.

112. Better it is to live one day strenuous and resolute than to live a hundred years sluggish and dissipated.

113. Better it is to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things.

114. Better it is to live one day seeing the Deathless than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the Deathless.

115. Better it is to live one day seeing the Supreme Truth than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the Supreme Truth.

186-187. There is no satisfying sensual desires, even with the rain of gold coins. For sensual pleasures give little satisfaction and much pain. Having understood this, the wise man finds no delight even in heavenly pleasures. The disciple of the Supreme Buddha delights in the destruction of craving.

211. Therefore hold nothing dear, for separation from the dear is painful. There are no bonds for those who have nothing beloved or unloved.

223. Overcome the angry by non-anger; overcome the wicked by goodness; overcome the miser by generosity; overcome the liar by truth.

270. He is not noble who injures living beings. He is called noble because he is harmless towards all living beings.

271-272. Not by rules and observances, not even by much learning, nor by gain of absorption, nor by a life of seclusion, nor by thinking, "I enjoy the bliss of renunciation, which is not experienced by the worldling" should you, O monks, rest content, until the utter destruction of cankers (Arahantship) is reached.

273. Of all the paths the Eightfold Path is the best; of all the truths the Four Noble Truths are the best; of all things passionlessness is the best: of men the Seeing One (the Buddha) is the best.

283. Cut down the forest (lust), but not the tree; from the forest springs fear. Having cut down the forest and the underbrush (desire), be passionless, O monks! [20]

284. For so long as the underbrush of desire, even the most subtle, of a man towards a woman is not cut down, his mind is in bondage, like the sucking calf to its mother.

285. Cut off your affection in the manner of a man who plucks with his hand an autumn lotus.

299. Those disciples of Gotama ever awaken happily who day and night constantly practice Mindfulness of the Body.

338. Just as a tree, though cut down, sprouts up again if its roots remain uncut and firm, even so, until the craving that lies dormant is rooted out, suffering springs up again and again.

339. The misguided man in whom the thirty-six currents of craving strongly rush toward pleasurable objects, is swept away by the flood of his passionate thoughts.

340. Everywhere these currents flow, and the creeper (of craving) sprouts and grows. Seeing that the creeper has sprung up, cut off its root with wisdom.

394. What is the use of your matted hair, O witless man? What of your garment of antelope's hide? Within you is the tangle (of passion); only outwardly do you cleanse yourself.

11/11/2013

“That is what madness is, isn't it? All the wheels fly off
the bus and things don't make sense any more. Or rather, they do, but it's not
a kind of sense anyone else can understand.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry

Take Shelter is a
film about mental illness. Its particular focus is the experience of schizophrenia
but in detailing its impact upon a single individual, upon his family, and upon
his community, it gives us a picture of what ripple-effect damage mental
illness of any sort can and does inflict when it arrives as it so often does,
unwelcome. In Take Shelter, Curtis
LaForche begins to experience some of the symptoms of schizophrenia about the
time that his mother had been committed for the same when he was ten. In a sense, the disease itself is a “coming
storm” that he sees before others in his family (because he is inside his own
head as it arrives) but that by the end, the entire family can “see” as well as
he can. I won’t give the ending away because it comes as a surprise and plot
spoiling is not my forte’. Suffice it
to say, when a person in a family faces any mental illness, it can be something
that they experience and hide from the family or it can be something that the family
“sees” first. Eventually, ity will affect everyone though.

In Take Shelter
the people around Curtis are, at first, unaware of what is happening to him and
they begin to respond to him as though his psychotic behavior is a
manifestation of selfishness not illness. From my own experience with mental
illness, I think this is the hardest part. When our minds are wounded somehow,
they do not bleed for anyone to see who is not looking for it, and we are
inclined to hide the symptoms that we so clearly feel. It is easier to assume
that we are “acting crazy” than it is to accept that we are crazy.

The film would be a good starting place for anyone
interested in exploring the process by which mental illness infiltrates a
family system. Curtis’ version of mental illness leaves him experiencing
hallucinations that others cannot obviously see or hear or feel. He feels
things. He sees things. He hears things. They are all real to him and his
family and friends, neighbors and bankers, bosses and co-workers are all drawn
into the web of his alternate reality somewhat, willing to credit him with more
trust than he probably deserves to be given under the circumstances. Indeed, by
the end of the movie, you as a viewer are given the chance to decide for
yourself what is or is not “true” about the story you have just been told. Who
can be anxious about all we have to be anxious about in the world today without
being vulnerable to its power. Even as I write this, people in the Philippines
are cleaning up from a typhoon that may have taken over 10,000 lives. It really
is hard to keep your sanity in the face of someone else’s craziness if their
craziness is entirely real to them and the world is, and will always be,
somewhat crazy itself.

Question for Comment:
Ever lost control of your own brain? How did it affect the people around you?

11/10/2013

"History doesn’t repeat itself but it usually rhymes,” I
often say. During the Napoleonic wars, Europeans needed food and America had
lots of land to grow food on. People sensing that agriculture would be a good
way to make a living, borrowed money and bought land. When the Napoleonic wars
ended, this land would become less profitable than it was when it was purchased
and a lot of banks would begin calling in loans, crashing the economy.
Simultaniously, British manufacturers converted from making war materials to
making consumables and the European continent could not buy them all. Ergo,
they had a lot to sell here in America. Here is a sentence from the Wikipedia
article on the Panic of 1819:

“American
manufacturers faced US markets swamped with British products, produced by
low-paid workers and priced well below competitive rates and forcing may
factories out of business.”

Rhyme with
anything you might be reading about in your papers? The end result is a
situation where you have a lot of people who went into debt to buy real estate
that turned out to be less valuable than they thought it was going to be at the
same time a whole sector of the economy gets whacked by foreign competition
desperate enough to make things for less.

Death by China
takes the U.S. Government to task for not protecting American manufacturing
jobs against Chinese competition. The argument is tightly constructed and laden
with graphics (Chines pollution falling on the American flag, a dagger stabbing
an American flag, blood splattering everywhere, etc.) Throughout the movie, we
are told that when Americans buy Chinese goods, American companies are forced
to relocate to China, American workers are laid off, American R&D is sent
to China soon after, Chinese workers are abused, the Chinese military is
strengthened, American children are killed (by dangerous Chinese products), the
trade deficit grows, debt is incurred, unemployment rates go up, life grows
bleak for our children, and so on.

It is an
interesting debate. I personally do not wish to have a manufacturing job but I
understand that many people do. I like working with and assembling ideas out of
idea parts. And though I might like to see the percentage of Americans working
in such fields raised simply because I muyslef find such work satisfying, I am
aware that idea jobs are not what makes everyone happy. I think to some extent,
some of the conflicts I have with some students in my classes has to do with
the fact that I am trying to educate them for an idea economy when they would
like to work in a things economy. I am not teaching them to make anything.

Ultimately it
comes down to this: Should we change our workers to fit the global economy or
should we change the economy to fit our workers? Neither will be entirely
possible. But it strikes me as a
conversation worth having in my U.S. History classes this week. Whatever it is
we decide to do, we have to stop thinking with our forward thinking lobes set
on low beam. As a history teacher, my job is to stop teaching the past without
teaching people how to think about the future – a future beyond tomorrow’s
paycheck. We need to stop being so capitalistic, we sell the rope that is going to be used to hjang us.

The subject of
the film is an important one I believe. I wish it had been presented with fewer
sensationalized graphics. The argument is reasoned in most respects but the
graphical side show is addressed to the most simplistic thinkers in the
audience.

Question for Comment: When you shop
for things, do you care where it comes from as much as you do its price?

11/09/2013

It is hard to know how to comment on a movie based
on history that people involved are complaining is not historical at all. The
film Captain Philips is “under the gun” for taking liberties with the facts and
creating a hero of someone some of the crew of the subject ship say should not
be.

So, last week, I watched Olympus Has Fallen (about an attack on the White House) and this
week I watched Captain Phillips about
an attack of Somali pirates on American merchant ships. Meanwhile, in U.S.
History class, I have been teaching students about the burning of the White
House during the War of 1812 and the successful conclusion of the Barbary
Pirate Wars immediately following.

There is a certain irony to the fact that the Navy
ship sent to rescue Captain Phillips from the Somali pirates in the ship’s
lifeboat was the USS Bainbridge. The
ship is named after William Bainbridge, an American Commodore who was taken
captive by Barbary pirates during the Jeffersonian presidency and who was part
of the naval action that later ended the piracy in the Mediterranean
altogether. Perhaps the greatest irony is that Bainbridge was the officer given
the task of paying the Algerian Bey tribute and ransom money in the early years
of the Barbary Coast conflict.

While I was watching the film, I was somewhat
impressed by how much firepower America was able to bring to bear on four
Somali pirates in a lifeboat. Clearly, Thomas Jefferson, who had campaigned on
a policy of a self-crippled military would have benefitted from a few
battleships and a Navy Seal Team Six back in the first decade of the nineteenth
century. Only one of the pirates in the Captain Phillips attack survived Navy
Seal “hospitality” and he is in prison in Indiana.

According to Ron Kuby, a civil rights lawyer,

“I think in this
particular case, there's a grave question as to whether America was in
violation of principles of truce in warfare on the high seas. This man seemed
to come onto the Bainbridge under a flag of truce to negotiate. He was then
captured. There is a question whether he is lawfully in American custody and
[there are] serious questions as to whether he can be prosecuted because of his
age.”

Under a flag of truce and under-age - I suppose the
irony here is to be found in President James Madison’s assertion (Second Inaugural
Address) that the U.S. was committed to fighting its wars in a perfectly moral,
ethical, and righteous manner.

“As the war was just in
its origin and necessary and noble in its objects, we can reflect with a proud
satisfaction that in carrying it on no principle of justice or honor, no usage
of civilized nations, no precept of courtesy or humanity, have been infringed.
The war has been waged on our part with scrupulous regard to all these
obligations, and in a spirit of liberality which was never surpassed. How
little has been the effect of this example on the conduct of the enemy!

They have retained as
prisoners of war citizens of the United States not liable to be so considered
under the usages of war.”

Would Madison have approved Guantanamo? I doubt it. I asked my students this
the other day in response to Madison’s assertion: “Can any country really
expect to win a war if they don’t let themselves “cheat?" If I had been in that
lifeboat – or if I had been a hostage
during the Barbary Coast War, I would have told my government “Cheat. I will
pray for your soul after I am free.”

Question for Comment: Do you think
the United States handicaps its military too much or too little?